[ecrea] Call for abstracts for Participatory Media and Moral Panic

REMINDER - CALL FOR ABSTRACTS/ PARTICIPATORY MEDIA AND MORAL PANIC


Glenn W. Muschert and I are proposing a panel on “Participatory Media 
and Moral Panic” for the Social Media and Society Conference that will 
be held in Toronto, Canada, at the end of July 2015 
(https://socialmediaandsociety.com/?page_id=1315). This panel session serves
as a starting point for an edited volume on the same topic. We would 
like to invite you to submit a proposal by February 26, 2015.

The transformation of the media landscape invites us to rethink the 
dialectic between “media” and “moral panic”, by focusing on the ways in 
which participatory media enables the public’s participation in moral 
panic.

Abstracts may relate to any of the following or other areas:
- Participatory media as a new form of media panic
- Participatory media in light of the history of media panics
- Circulation and propagation of moral panic online
- Publics’ uses of participatory media to trigger, fuel or maintain 
moral panic
- Uses of participatory media by different publics (e.g. subaltern 
counter-publics or general public) as a form of activism in the context 
of moral panic
- Effects of participation in moral panic on media habits
- Relationship between participation in online moral panic and the 
formation,evolution or dissolution of social networks and/or social ties
- Spatiotemporal scales of moral panic: from local issues to global 
problems or global issues affecting local communities
- Renewal of the accessibility to fields of moral panic upon the arrival 
of the Internet
- New digital methodologies to capture classical objects of moral panic
- Effects of participatory media on the very concept of moral panic

For a detailed outline of the scope of this call for abstracts, please 
see the text below.

This panel creates an opportunity for colleagues to present their 
papers, to meet face to face and to examine our common theme in an 
interactive
environment. The aim is to promote lively dialogue among experts and to 
offer a venue for a fruitful and satisfying discussion on how we 
theorize moral panics and participatory media.

The deadline to propose a panel at the conference is March 2nd 2015.
Therefore, if you would like to participate in the Social Media and 
Society Conference, please send us the details of the 
authors/participants and a brief abstract of 150-200 words by February 
26 at the latest. You will be informed shortly after if your abstract 
has been selected. Please simultaneously e-mail Glenn Muschert at 
(muschegw /at/ MiamiOH.edu) and Nathalie Paton at (nathalie.paton /at/ gmail.com).

We feel important to point out that contribution to the Social Media and 
Society Conference panel does not imply, nor is contingent upon, final
acceptance of a paper for the proposed volume on participatory media and 
moral panic. While the Social Media and Society Conference panel and the 
planned volume may complement one another, they are nonetheless separate 
projects. Acceptance for publication in the edited volume will require 
successful peer and editorial review prior to publication. We mention 
this simply to avoid
potential confusion.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. 
Also, please feel welcome to post this call for abstracts widely and to 
forward it to interested colleagues and students.

We look forward to reading your abstracts.

Best regards,
Glenn W. Muschert (Professor at Miami University, US)
Nathalie Paton (Post-doctorate Research Fellow at Aix-Marseille 
University, FR)



______________________________________________

Call for Abstracts
Panel on Participatory Media & Moral Panic
Social Media & Society conference

The field of moral panics is structured around a plurality of models and 
side
developments (Cohen 1972; Spector, Kitsuse 1977; Goode, Ben-Yehuda 1994;
Klocke, Muschert 2010, 2013) derived from two distinct terms, that of
“deviance” - following the path traced by the work of Stanley Cohen (1972) -
and that of “social problem” - along the lines of Herbert Blumer’s 
pioneering
research (1971). If the development of these models is tainted by criticism
(e.g. McRobbie, Thornton 1995; Ungar 2001; Cornwell, Linders 2002; Young
2004),
a strong consensus remains regarding the role played by media in producing
moral panics. Without being the sole mediator at work, media are at the very
least a secondary actor broadcasting information (Goode, Ben-Yehuda 1994),
amplifying and providing visibility to social phenomenon and/or groups of
people (Cohen 1972).

Although the various models stemming from the moral panic concept have
constantly taken the media as their analytical pivot, this field of research
has dealt very little with the changing technological landscape (Klocke,
Muschert 2013), even though this latest development may potentially 
challenge
the way moral panics have been considered until now. With the 
diversification
of communication devices (e-mail, text message, chat, video-conference, 
etc.),
the media landscape has become more complex in recent years. The 
ever-growing
process of mediatized social relationships is notably linked to the
development
of “participatory” media (Jenkins 2006; Deuze 2006; Livingstone 2013), 
that is
to say media by the means of which users not only consume but also 
produce and
broadcast cultural content. Therefore, publics can just as well trigger but
also fuel, spread and maintain moral panic, via the communication devices of
the web 2.0 type (Paton, Figeac 2015). It may even be a key factor in 
the ways
in which moral panic forms and spreads from the local to the international
level (and vice versa) via communication technologies and the use of digital
networks. And while moral panics are “trans-media”, present in both
“traditional” media and digital media (Frau-Meigs 2012), the 
proliferation of
“mediascapes” (Appadurai 1990) gives access to a greater amount of media
arenas
within the public sphere. The transformation of the media landscape 
therefore
invites us to rethink the dialectic between "media" and "moral panic", 
notably
by focusing on the ways in which participatory media enable the public’s
participation in moral panics.

The coproduction of moral panic, via media participation, can be finely
analyzed to document how individuals, through their relational links, 
maintain
and propagate moral panic. This makes it possible to better understand how
these forms of media participation affect sociability and social networks,
notably those stigmatized by a controversial subject. This program thus
intends
to examine publics’ media participation in the coproduction of moral 
panic. It
will consider how the use of ICT renews forms of regulation and will 
deal with
how the publics’ contributions are transforming individuals’ personal social
networks and shaping the outlines of new (large) social networks.

This call for abstracts suggests the following directions in which such a
field
of enquiry can be pursued; yet we are open to additional suggestions.


1.    Participatory media in light of the history of media panics

The concepts of moral panic and media share a longstanding complicity 
despite
a
particular medium. Comic strips, video games, the Internet, all these 
mediums
embody fear and distrust of one generation for another at a given time and
place (Drotner 1992, 1999; Springhall 1998; Krinsky 2013). The adoption of
participatory media is no exception. Controversies between passionate
technophiles and just as engaged technophobes regularly shape public debates
about the risks of adopting new media, or the implications of these 
practices
on social ties and the upholding of social order, particularly with 
regard to
some threats, such as the contagion of violence through the use of the 
web in
connection with terrorist networks, the increase of incidences of
cyberbullying, or access to pornography or more particularly networks of
pedophiles (e.g. Boyd 2012; Molloy 2013). The object of this first part 
of the
book is to investigate recent media panics in relationship to participatory
media in order to identify and question their specificity, or/and the 
ways in
which these latest episodes of debate coincide and extend the history of 
media
panics surrounding other mediums in the past. This retrospective also
constitutes an opportunity to provide more information about the social
conditions that create, maintain and result in a successful episode of moral
panic.

The object of this first axis could be empirical or theoretical enquiries
responding to questions such as:
- What recent media panics have participatory media given way to? What are
their specificities?
- How can these media panics foreshadow contemporary relationships to
participatory media? Do these latest episodes of debate coincide and  extend
the history of media panics surrounding other mediums in the past?
- This retrospective also constitutes an opportunity to provide more
information about the social conditions that create, maintain and result 
in a
successful episode of moral panic.


2.    Rethinking the publics’ role and types of participation

Key figures of the 19th century who first evoked “moral panics” assimilated
the
public to an entity, a partly irrational faceless and nameless crowd,
empowered
by collective strength. They insisted upon the fact relational dynamics
between
individuals fundamentally changes when agglomerated into a huge crowd. While
publics were then at the center of analysis in an attempt to 
characterize the
clustering of individuals, nowadays, they are often relegated to secondary
roles. Even more so considering the publics that have a place in the
literature
are those of a political nature, as civil society actors (e.g. moral
entrepreneurs, claim-makers, social movements or more commonly NGOs, private
companies, political parties, etc.). Yet it is precisely this anonymous 
mass,
the agglomeration of individuals, the crowd of people, that makes the fabric
of
moral panics and embodies the strength of this collective entity, and in 
turn
the potency of the concept of moral panic.

This second axis calls for proposals rethinking this sector of 
literature and
opening the black box of publics within the realm of moral panic.
- To do so, a starting point could be to consider the place of publics 
in the
history of moral panics
- What are the diverse formats of publics’ participation developed 
throughout
the years according to the different authors within the field?
- How can contemporary technological devices overcome past difficulties in
studying moral panic?



3.    Publics’ media participation: use of participatory media by the 
public to
contribute to moral panics

Research focusing on publics and subaltern counter-publics (Fraser 2005) 
help
evaluate the changes introduced by the participatory media. Publics now have
the opportunity to use the Internet to produce, disseminate and receive
information, regardless of legitimate institutions such as news outlets, in
addition to having the possibility of communicating beyond their immediate
circles through digital social networks (Fuchs 2013). These evolutions 
of the
borders of the public sphere renews the manners in which identification,
ownership and protest of definitions of public problems can be rendered, 
on a
scale that exceeds interpersonal relationships (Klocke, Muschert 2013) and
lets
dissonant voices enter public debates (Ungar 2001). If publicizing 
opinions do
not go hand in hand with their visibility to wide audiences (Boyd 2008), the
proliferation of Internet-related media arenas, however, increases the
resources available to citizens to disseminate their opinions, and 
thereby, to
try to influence the definition of social problems that are at the center of
public debates. This possibility represents a major change with respect 
to the
legitimation or, conversely, the challenge of social order.

This third axis could call for proposals of such nature:
- How can the coproduction of moral panic, via media participation, be 
finely
analyzed to document how individuals, through their relational links, 
maintain
and propagate moral panic ?
- How does this media participation interfere with the definition of social
problems?
- Do “new media systems and forms (‘mediascapes’) and modern social 
movements
[which take advantage of this new setting] obstruct the efforts of
conventional
media or pressure groups to create folk devils” as Critcher puts it (2008)?
- Given that voicing opinions in the public debate is insufficient to
co-produce perception of the problem at stake and public policies that 
follow,
does the broadening of the sphere public lead to increasing counter-opinions
and/or a new era in which these counter-opinions are taken into account 
more?
If so, how do they interplay in the production of moral panics, and 
ultimately
in the construction of public problems?
- How does the use of ICT renew forms of regulation?
- Does the public now have new resources and expertise to define the 
object of
the panic via their media contributions?


4.    Effects of moral panics on social networks

The increased mediatization of social relations has contributed to the
transformation of ways to weave and maintain social relationships (Wellman
2001). New technical devices and the widespread use of the Internet can thus
be
conceived as a vector playing an active role in the evolution of relational
structures. The Internet and the access to public expression that it allows
can
be grasped as a means to facilitate the formation of social groups united
around a common area of interest. The emergence of very large social 
networks
on the Internet can hypothetically power collective dynamics, such as social
movements, which may forge the contours of public problems. By providing new
media arenas and forums for expression, the Internet also facilitates the
constitution of counter-hegemonic, subversive and oppositional social
movements
(Paton 2015). In this respect, sociotechnical innovations bring along their
share of political issues. However, more than generating new social ties,
participatory media are primarily communication tools allowing one to 
maintain
a network of relationships and develop communication with one’s contacts 
(Ito
et al. 2008). This change in the organization of social relations is 
linked to
the way individuals have in recent years been actively taking part in 
“social
network sites” (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, that promote
dialogue
within and between networks of relationships.
This axis encourages better knowledge of the ICT-social networks 
dialectic to
explore the effect of online participation in moral panic on relational
structures at an individual and collective level, by considering in 
particular
the inclusion of the private sphere in political debates online.

Potential areas of interest of this fourth axis could be:
- What are the effects of participation in moral panic on both civic
associations (i.e. relational dynamics between ordinary citizens) and its
effects on personal social networks? Does participation lead to the creation
of
new social ties, or the severance of existing relationships? Are they
strengthened or tested? Which relationships are concerned?
- What influence do acquaintances have online/offline in terms of engagement
in
a collective movement (e.g. demonstrating with close relations with whom we
have discussed this social issue and (re) made contact via a digital social
network)?
- How do these forms of media participation affect those stigmatized by a
controversial subject?


5.    Spatiotemporal scales of moral panic in regards to the circulation of
content, objects and people

The moral panics scales could also be adjusted. Moral panics do not emerge
unscathed from the convergence of media: they are no longer confined to a
local
or even a national sphere; some moral panics affect distant territories from
where they originated and mutate into a transnational phenomena (see
Critcher).
To complicate matters, the multiplication of mediascapes densifies the sites
from which moral panics can emerge and/or be sustained. In a similar 
manner to
these spatial issues, moral panics are not restraint to a tight temporality,
which would imply linear phenomena with a beginning and an easily 
identifiable
end (Thomson 1998). They have a "heritage" quality to them (Critcher 2003):
media discourse circulates throughout the layers of society and feed the
repertoire of collective action long after the initial departing point. 
Moral
panics have long-term effects with possible ties to other social 
problems. In
regards to these different considerations, moral panics should be put into
perspective with flows of global mobility. Additional emphasis should
highlight
the ways in which media content overflows boundaries and redefines
spatiotemporal scales (Frau-Meigs 2010).

- How should (or has) public debates that accompany moral panics in the 
era of
the globalization of social processes be(en) studied?
- How should the different levels of the production of panics be understood
when they are likely to spread from a local dimension, to a national or
international one, and vice versa, and thus feed on spatially distant
contributions, but also spread beyond specific sites?
- In short, how to account for the mobility of moral panics, whether spatial
and/or temporal, be accounted for, notably on a methodological level?
- How can the multiplication of sites of production of moral panics be
understood, through mediascapes that can have different legitimacy?


6.    Renewal of the accessibility to fields and the methodologies to 
capture
classical objects of moral panic

The development of methodological tools and the renewed access to the fields
of
enquiry in relationship to the advent participatory media deserve to be
examined. These transformations of the methodological landscape are enhanced
by
new possibilities to capture the expression of moral panics.
The media, in addition to the fact that they are objects of analysis 
regarding
their mediation, are also an excellent methodological tool in that they 
allow
one to observe otherwise inaccessible fields of social sciences. For 
example,
it is now possible to follow how the public receive, share, spread opinions,
just as it is possible to question people’s fears, objections, and claims
concerning a moral dilemma on very large scales. This access to public 
opinion
is feasible without conducting face-to-face interviews or using secondary
sources such as news outlets. The accumulation of traces from users’ 
Internet
activities constitutes a platform to observe the content produced, and the
interactions thus engaged. This renewed access to fields of enquiry 
could be,
for example, an opportunity to better understand how moral panics affect the
public and lead them to change their media practices and the signs they 
arbor
to signify their identity (Casilli et al. 2012; Paton 2015).

Also, recent methodological contributions related to new techniques of data
collection (e.g. data mining, topic detection and tracking, etc.) in the 
areas
such as Digital Humanities invites one to revisit moral panic theories 
as they
provide new opportunities of research. These innovations may shed a 
different
light on previous approaches to moral panics.

This axis invites proposals that either illustrate access to old objects of
moral panic in a new manner.


7.    Towards the consolidation and extension of the notion of moral panic?

Regarding the diverse sociotechnical evolutions discussed up until now, the
notion of moral panic could be in need of improvement, with respect to the
dialectic “participatory media” – “moral panic”, to consolidate media’s 
role,
extend the scope of media implied by the term and highlight publics’ 
role via
media participation.

- How can this notion now be understood after the media landscape has been
affected by such in-depth transformations?
- At the same time, what are the limits of the “participation” notion?
- If there are more contributors involved in public debates, given 
facilitated
access to the public sphere, does the multiplication of these voices impact
the
notion of moral panics?
- How does participatory media change formats of participation?
- How can we develop transmedia analysis/theoretical models of moral panics
that take into account all the different mediums (TV, web 2.0, Smartphones,
etc.)?


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